Jane Fonda admits being raped, sexually abused as a girl
New York, March 3 (IANS) Actress Jane Fonda revealed that she was raped and sexually abused as a girl.
“I’ve been raped, I’ve been sexually abused as a child and I’ve been fired because I wouldn’t sleep with my boss,” the two-time Oscar winner said was quoted as saying.
“I always thought it was my fault. That I didn’t do or say the right thing,” she added.
Fonda’s remarks came in a conversation with Brie Larson, who last year won the Oscar for “Room,” the story of a woman who is held hostage for years by a man who sexually abuses her.
The 79-year-old Fonda, a prominent activist for women’s rights for years, in 2001 founded the Centre for Adolescent Reproductive Health, which helps prevent teen pregnancy.
She is also an active member of the global V-Day movement, which works to halt violence against women.
“I know young girls who’ve been raped and didn’t even know it was rape. They think, ‘It must have been because I said no the wrong way,'” she said.
“One of the great things the women’s movement has done is to make us realize that (rape and abuse is) not our fault. We were violated and it’s not right,” Fonda added.
In 2014, Fonda revealed that her mother, Frances Ford Seymour, was also sexually abused as a child and committed suicide at age 42, when the actress was 12.
Fonda, while she was preparing her memoirs, discovered that situation when she reviewed her mother’s medical history.
“The minute that I read that, everything fell into place,” Fonda said. “I knew why the promiscuity, the endless plastic surgery, the guilt, the inability to love or be intimate, and I was able to forgive her and forgive myself.”